I say it’s because of personality politics … the A-list only allows advances that add value to their own stock. In case case the fact is that most of what’s being discussed as “new” I recall from the early 80s, even the late 70s. (I carried around my copy of “Netweavers” for years!) And the software that’s coming out? I saw designs that were almost identicial (if not superior) in the last 90s … a decade and more ago.
My point is simply this: my communalism dates back to “the bus” in ’68 … where dozens showed up to help hang new drapes but when it came time to change the engine it was just the.same.old 6 or 7 of us. And I’ve watched the dynamic mature: the clique that was oh.so.willing to “partake” but not actually “take part” have been treated well by the passing years and a good number of them are now well-positioned if not wealthy. And their thing is this: stand back and watch til there’s something they like and then take / steal / copy it … your basic Bill Gates manoever. Actual collaboration? Horse.shit … “collaboration” is the pretext they use to stick their nose in it.

So anyhow, it’s still good stuff … however couched in self-serving cant.

Here’s an item that shows the end effect: March, 2010, a lovely blog post celebrating a brilliant new method (“Notes v. Maps: Trading Quantity for Quality“) when actually the method was “cutting edge” late-90s. How am I so sure? Because that’s when I abandoned for the fact of being retro- and inherently dead-ended. But it suits the twits in suits so … so that’s that. Period. “Innovation”?! C’mon, get real …

I came across something of interest while going through old material in one of my blogs. In the process of setting up a new blog with old material (WordPress can import from other blog platforms … sometimes very, very well. But when not “very well” it’s catastrophic!) I had to go through checking for data errors. In the process of that, I came across something I noted 5yrs ago about healthcare policy / personality types. In a nutshell: that’s what I’ve been beavering away at since 1975.

Facilitating workshops here in Edmonton about GATT (The social justice community was active in this long before there was an “anti-globalization movement”.) I noticed something about the way people formed opinions. It seemed to me that the strength of their conviction and the confidence of their positions bore very little relationship with the accuracy of their knowledge or the depth of their understanding. This concerned me. A lot. As an 8 year (1962) old I read about the Hungarian Revolution. The next year Kennedy was assassinated. When Prague Spring rolled around I was on the hippie bus and we hosted some kids who showed up here that summer. Then … and this is key … while I was in uniform (Canadian equivalent to Signals Intelligence, after have trained airborne infantry) we over-threw the Allende government in Chile. So how citizens relate to policy concerned me a lot. As it does today.

I know I’m not one of the brilliant ones. But I also know (industry tested) that when one persists with good craft one experiences something like success. My point … or, rather, the point of my “participatory deliberation” project … is that only discourse can root convictions in one’s personal belief system. Otherwise? Otherwise it’s usually some sort of sophistry … or, at best, rhetoric. What I find is that many times positions taken are as though proxies for other issues. Some sort of displacement? I don’t know for certain. If I’m granted a second life with intellect I may devote myself to cog-psych and study that, as I wish I could have in this one! 😉

My suggestion is that a system that fosters (read: imposes) logical rigour can support true discourse while promoting the individuals’ subjective narrative. The up-side of having an actual design rather than abstract theory is that, like most good craft, it has multiple applications. Like, for example, acting as the core of a pedagogical method. (Imagine something like Harvard University’s Harvard’s Professor Sandel in his “Justice” series on a global scale. Really!) Or, somewhat more mundane, as the spine of a deliberative system for budgeting and other policy decisions at a municipal level. OpenYEG, yes? Parks policy in Edmonton … or, moving up a notch, energy policy for the province, or the country.

I like to think of it in terms of Hermann Hesse’s glasperlenspiel, or pondering the impact of the ancient Library of Alexandria, keeping in mind UBC’s John Willinsky and his work on Open Access. Likewise Jurgen Habermas, with his “discourse ethics”. But what I’m really talking about is a spreadsheet of sorts … a spreadsheet for ideas. “Merely” … and it only took me from 1975 to 2003 to figure out how to do it! 🙂

If I had some sort of backing, any sort of support or collaboration or sign of interest, I’d be more explicit about my design. But I don’t, so I’m not. And so I don’t often run my mouth like this. But discovering that old blog post seemed an opportune moment for heh something like an exposee.

“I just wanted to say thank you for giving us a place to make our thoughts and comment heard. It’s about time the government provide a centralized place for citizens to express their opinions where they feel they will be heard.” [Emphasis added by him there.]

My response to him on Twitter was this:
“With 3.7K / 53 pages of comments (and the thread closed), you say ID on Change.Gov is a place people can go to be heard?! #koolaid”
In effect, this says that standing in a crowd with 3,699 other people and holding up a placard is a brave step forward for engaged democracy.
That’s non-sense … and worse: it leads to complacent self-delusion, entirely antithetical to the drive for innovation.

Sidebar: I noticed that Sifry has blocked me on Twitter …
… to that, I tweeted this: ” Well, after years of cold-shoulder I finally got a reaction: blocked by none other than @Mlsif, the high-priest of democracy. #borg #matrix ”

The ironies are ripe … and entirely keeping with what might seem a cynical appraisal on my part: those who are charged with the responsibility of applauding the Emperor’s new clothes are doing just that.Such behavior has consequences.